Occult Japan Or The Way Of The Gods

Occult Japan is an esoteric study of Japanese personality and possession based on Japan's indigenous religion, Shinto, and other aspects of Japanese culture, history and heritage. Shinto, also known as "The Way of the Gods," revolves around the kami ("gods" or "spirits"), supernatural entities believed to inhabit all things. The kami are worshiped at kamidana household shrines, family shrines, and public shrines. The study offers exhaustive observations and academic discussions of various aspects of Japanese life, including language, religious practices, economics, travels in Japan, and the development of personality.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Occult Japan: Or, The Way Of The Gods; An Esoteric Study Of Japanese Personality And Possession Percival Lowell Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1894 Cults; Cultus; Demoniac possession; Japan; National characteristics, Japanese; Shinto

Occult Japan is an esoteric study of Japanese personality and possession based on Japan's indigenous religion, Shinto, and other aspects of Japanese culture, history and heritage. Shinto, also known as "The Way of the Gods," revolves around the kami ("gods" or "spirits"), supernatural entities believed to inhabit all things. The kami are worshiped at kamidana household shrines, family shrines, and public shrines. The study offers exhaustive observations and academic discussions of various aspects of Japanese life, including language, religious practices, economics, travels in Japan, and the development of personality.

Occult Japan is an esoteric study of Japanese personality and possession based on Japan's indigenous religion, Shinto, and other aspects of Japanese culture, history and heritage. Shinto, also known as "The Way of the Gods," revolves around the kami ("gods" or "spirits"), supernatural entities believed to inhabit all things. The kami are worshiped at kamidana household shrines, family shrines, and public shrines. The study offers exhaustive observations and academic discussions of various aspects of Japanese life, including language, religious practices, economics, travels in Japan, and the development of personality.

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SHINTŌ, or the Way of the Gods, is the name of the oldest religious belief of the Japanese people. The belief itself indefinitely antedates its name, for it has come down to us from a time when sole possession of the field precluded denomination. It knew no christening till Buddhism was adopted from China in the sixth century of our era, and was then first called Shintō, or the Way of the Gods, to distinguish it from Butsudō, or the Way of Buddha.If it thus acquired a name, it largely lost local habitation. For Buddhism proceeded to appropriate its possessions, temporal and spiritual. It had been both church and state. Buddhism became the state, and assumed the greater part of the churches; paying Shintō the compliment of incorporating, without acknowledgment, such as it fancied of the Shintō rites, and of kindly recognizing the more popular Shintō gods for lower avatars of its own. Under this generous adoption on the one hand, and relegation to an inferior place in the national pantheon on the other, very little, ostensibly, was left of Shintō,--just enough to swear by.Lost in the splendor of Buddhist show, Shintō lay obscured thus for a millenium; lingering chiefly as a twilight of popular superstition. At last, however, a new era dawned. A long peace, following the firm establishing of the Shogunate, turned men's thoughts to criticism, and begot the commentators, a line of literati, who, beginning with Mabuchi, in the early part of the eighteenth century, devoted themselves to a study of the past, and continued to comment, for a century and a half, upon the old Japanese traditions buried in the archaic language of the Kojiki and the Nihongi, the history-bibles of the race. As science, the commentators' elucidations are chiefly comic, but their practical outcome was immense. Criticism of the past begot criticism of the present, and started a chauvinistic movement, which overthrew the Shogunate and restored the Mikado--with all the irony of fate, since these littérateurs owed their existence to the patronage of those they overthrew. This was the restoration of 1868. Shintō came back as part and parcel of the old. The temples Buddhism had usurped were purified; that is, they were stripped of Buddhist ornament, and handed over again to the Shintō priests. The faith of the nation's springtime entered upon the Indian summer of its life.